Banks are no strangers to innovation, but are they keeping up with the times? What strategies are banks using to deal with rapid innovation in the financial industry? These topics were central to a panel on Innovation Hubs and Sandboxes at Columbia University’s 6th Annual Fintech, DFS (Digital Financial Services) & Payments Summit which took place in early June, 2017.[1] The panel had participation from Citi Fintech, Open Innovation at Barclays Bank, Deutsche Bank’s New York Innovation Lab, the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, and KPMG.

When it comes to remittances, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have become an unlikely global exception. In April, the World Bank reported that the money sent by migrants to their developing home countries fell for the second year in a row in 2016, to US$429 billion, a 2.4% decrease over the previous year. The decline is remarkable because such a sustained drop in global remittance flows had not been seen for about three decades.